Fact checking in a world of misinformation, disinformation and fakery

Donald Trump regularly hijacks the term 'fake news' to dismiss news reports that make him mad.

Politicians and their rusted-on supporters in Australia deploy the term in similar tricky circumstances.

The label fake news has been so thoroughly misused by so many people, in so many different contexts, its meaning has become, well, meaningless.

The worst perpetrators of disinformation are often the first to accuse those who call them to account peddlers of fake news.

Claire Wardle, an authority on the dark side of information ecosystems, believes it is time give the term up. The First Draft News research director from the Harvard Kennedy School in the US argues the more the phrase fake news is bandied around, the more people think it is the media that is fake, not the claims of politicians and the malicious bad actors.

Wardle was the keynote speaker at this week's Navigating the News conference at the University of Tasmania, where she said:

"The term fake doesn't begin to describe the complexity of the different types of misinformation (the inadvertent sharing of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false)."

The role of social media

Disinformation continues to gush through social media outlets spreading hate, prejudice and polarising opinions. A malign, fabricated or just plain dodgy claim can spread on an industrial scale to millions of users within minutes.

The motivations of those who create the content vary. Russian troll factories meddled in the US and French elections; information was weaponised to create social conflict and to destroy the credibility of candidates.

Bogus news sites, in and outside of the US, published fabricated stories designed to discredit and humiliate.

Closer to home, Myanmar officials continue manipulate social media to deny state sanctioned persecution of Rohingya men, women and children.

There are moves to install filters on the social media fire hoses. Google and Facebook are working to identify the manipulators and purveyors of information created to cause political, financial and social harm.

The New York Times recently reported that Facebook had removed 652 fake accounts, pages and groups trying to spread hate speech, seeking to interfere in elections in the US, UK and elsewhere.

Whether this can make a discernible difference remains open to question.

Much is known and plenty is unknown about the dark side of the news ecosystem. The ramifications however, remain profound for legacy news organisations and respected broadcasters like the ABC, CNN and the BBC.

Surprisingly, trust in established US media, where the disruption first emerged and remains acute, has not diminished in the past 12 months, according to Poynter Institute's Media Trust survey.

But trust in social media has.

Fact checking and fake news

Even so, the role of reporters and fact check journalists is changing as the purveyors of fake news become more skilled.

Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the International Fact Checking Network based at the US Poynter Institute (of which RMIT ABC Fact Check is an accredited member), says reporters are coming under pressure to be news verifiers.

Mantzarlis said, in a recent interview, reporters now need to be able to verify photos, assess news updates from seemingly legitimate sources, reverse image search videos and pictures coming from unidentified sources around big news events.

Dealing with the information disorder requires extra diligence and a new skill set. The fast-changing news ecosystem presents considerable challenges for fact check journalism that has traditionally focused on the claims of influential and powerful individuals, organisations and lobby groups seeking to shape public policy.

There are now well over 100 respected fact checking organisations globally — a threefold increase in six years.

At RMIT ABC Fact Check it was never envisioned that our researchers would check the lightning-fast proliferation of false and misleading news spread through bot networks and troll factories.

A fact check can take weeks of research in consultation with experts before arriving at a verdict.

But that process need not sideline fact check journalism, as there is a key role for fact checkers to play in bringing integrity and authentication to the news flow.

At RMIT ABC Fact Check researchers and fact checkers are working to develop an online "credential" to teach staff and students how to spot fakery and misinformation popping up in social media feeds.

Once perfected, the credential will have general application and hopefully become more broadly available.

For discerning news consumers, the credential will be a valuable addition to the tool box. In the meantime, there are basic rules to follow to avoid being an inadvertent conveyor of misinformation.

Consumers should interrogate the record of individual reporters, programs and news outlets for their biases, accuracy and reliability.

Scanning the URL of a news article, for example, can indicate whether it is bogus and a portal into a darker world.

Fact checkers can become faster at investigating claims and publishing verdicts. The power of the algorithm and automated search engines being developed will allow researchers to find claims and relevant data significantly more quickly.

Rather than focus exclusively on individual claims, researchers will be able to also assess what issues are being contested and frame research around more general claims.

Rusted on beliefs

Polling shows that President Trump's core supporters hold firm to their beliefs no matter how many times the President is fact checked — and that is considerable.

In Australia the same response can be seen in support for Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. Hanson's claim that the country is being swamped by Muslims has been debunked by The Conversation's fact check and others, but the claim lives on as a talking point and party support has not diminished.

Supporters care less about what leaders say, and more about what they represent. The emotional connection drives loyalty.

At fact check we do not make judgements about the motivations of those making a claim, only whether there is data or expert opinion to back it up. We seek to promote debate and respectful discourse.

In parliamentary debates our fact checks are regularly quoted. Both sides of Parliament regularly retweet and repost fact checks when they believe they support a particular policy position.

Fact Check engages with audiences through Facebook live. Researchers and experts field questions from followers, a process that promotes knowledge around an issue and a greater understanding of fact checking as a form of journalism.

The most recent broadcast around homelessness involved interviews with rough sleepers and others who had been without a home.

Our next step is to engage not just with audiences, but those we fact check.

Australia seems to have avoided the very worst aspects of the disinformation and misinformation ecosystem that have distorted rational political debate in the US, Europe and Asia.

According to Wardle there are reasons for this: the target audiences are small and monetarising sensational content delivers fewer rewards.

Also, in countries like Australia, the UK and Canada, where there is a trusted national broadcaster publishing news across multiple platforms, consumers have a quick and reliable reference point to judge the reliability of what they see, read and the video content they watch.

Wardle warns that Australia should not be complacent, the scale of disruption may radically change and the federal election — scheduled for early 2019 — will be a major test for everybody involved in navigating the news.

That includes RMIT ABC Fact Check.

In the meantime, for those wanting to hone their fact checking skills, try these steps from the US-based Poynter Institute.